Contract killers: insecurity is pushing our teachers away

Leaving teachers at the mercy of fleeting contracts and a laborious safety net is no way to attract the best and brightest to the profession, writes Mike Stuchbery.

In 2012, considerable airtime was devoted to scrutinising the quality of our nation's teachers.

Christopher Pyne, the Opposition's education spokesman, trotted it out to wave off the findings of the Gonski review, calling for underperforming teachers to be moved out of the system ahead of raising teacher salaries or reducing class sizes.

And in Victoria, the local branch of the AEU found itself tangling with the Premier, Ted Baillieu, over demands for an ill-defined 'productivity increase'.

It's a hot topic. Every schmuck on social media, every parent in the café has an opinion on how to get those shiftless chalkies to do their jobs and raise the smarts of the nation's young. So let me use this not-insignificant platform to throw mine out there:

Scrap the contract system facing new teachers. Chuck it away. Consign it to the reeking Tartarus from whence it came.

As I write these words, I'm sitting in a rather well-appointed apartment on Stuttgart's southern fringe. I struck it lucky halfway through last year and scored a job at an international school, teaching the sons and daughters of Daimler & Bosch corporates, as well as a bunch of American military kids.

While I adore Germany, love the ability to get on a train and be in any major European capital in eight hours, and look set to settle here, there wasn't particularly any burning desire in me to pack up and leave Australia.

I left because of the one-two combination punch of the contract system so entrenched in our education system and the inability of Newstart to support jobseekers.

Ask any teacher on a contract and they'll tell you that much of the time that could be spent planning lessons, marking work and becoming the kind of presence within a school that makes for an effective educator is taken up either reapplying for their own jobs or seeking their next contract.

Those on contracts find it near impossible to get loans, secure a mortgage, lay down any of the kind of foundations that allow one to focus and concentrate on their career.

Distracted teacher: sub-par education for students.

Yes, I do see that there are arguments that support the implementation of short-term contracts. It allows principals to get rid of the incompetent or those who are incompatible within a particular school environment. It allows administrations to 'try before they buy'. In a rather mercenary, pragmatic sense, I guess it does keep some teachers on their toes.

However, through circumstances beyond their control - funding cuts, for example - it does lead to many teachers finding themselves in late January without a job for the next year, having to dip into meagre savings or apply for Newstart.

Look, while we're at it, let's rethink the Newstart allowance we give to jobseekers, particular those at the mercy of contracts.

I tried to apply for Newstart early last year, after losing my job to a drop in staff funding for 2012. Turns out, my wife's part-time call-centre job, bringing in a few hundred per week, put us outside Centrelink's sphere of assistance.

If we had qualified, we'd be making more than the widely-mooted $35 a day, but not by much. As a newly-married couple with no kids and a rental, we were lucky - we didn't have too many financial strains. We also had very supportive family.

I'm not complaining. I count my blessings - I come across the stories of those who've had it much, much, much worse every day.

Consider the average teacher who is made redundant, however. Think of those who aren't twenty-something graduates and who are, perhaps, single parents. Think about their household costs and the unexpected costs that arise each and every month. Think about the costs of raising children. It quickly becomes clear that one or two spells scrabbling to score a gig at one of the few times per year that teaching jobs open up - for such is the nature of the profession - is enough to drive even the most devoted teachers from the profession.

The cocktail of contracts and the inflexibility of the welfare system is an active deterrent to anybody seeking to make teaching a career, particularly within the state system. For teachers seeking to make a career, they have at least a decade of almost continuous job-searching ahead of them, whether it be in the workplace, reapplying for their own jobs, or to satisfy Centrelink's requirements of applying for 10 or so positions a fortnight.

Yes, we need to raise training standards for teachers. Yes, we need to ensure that our best and brightest are among those who choose education as a career. We need to boost training for those already teaching. Hell, make it easier for principals to fire an incompetent teacher or burnt out timeserver.

Look, I'm going to go out on a limb and agree with Mr Pyne. Changes need to be made.

However, while you do that, scrap the contract system and put in place a system that rewards improvement while giving greater job security. You will see an improvement in the quality of our teachers as people no longer see teaching as an active path to financial strife.

If both sides of politics throughout the states were serious about improving the quality of our nation's teachers, they'd be doing all that they could to present education as a profession rewarding excellence, innovation and commitment. They wouldn't be helping to cement into place a quasi-punitive system that actively deters the next generation from aspiring to educate.

I'm lucky that I'm able to follow my passion. I find it a crying shame that many talented, dedicated individuals find it simply too hard.

Mike Stuchbery is a Melbourne teacher and writer, now based in Stuttgart, Germany. He enjoys delving into history, thinking about thinking, long walks and the music of the Baroque period. View his full profile here.